Women, Bondage, and the Reconstructed Constitution
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Description
I have been working for more than ten years to promote the idea of a Reconstructed Constitution: an Antislavery Constitution. It is odd that the idea of a reconstructed, antislavery constitution needs a promoter. We all know that the Constitution of the United States was amended during Reconstruction and amended in transformative ways. Universal citizenship was established; the federal government became guarantor of fundamental civil rights; slavery was forbidden; and the rights of free people were specified. It is a short step from these truths to say that the constitution was reconstructed according to the values of antislavery: Every human being on United States soil was recognized as holding the rights—always tempered by social duties—to be self-defining, morally autonomous, and active in the construction of social meaning. Still, the late-nineteenth-century repudiation of Reconstruction took in its wake respect for the values upon which this nation was rebuilt after the Civil War. The people— most of whom were African American or female (or both)—who struggled successfully to constitutionalize antislavery interpretations of citizenship and human rights were erased from constitutional history, and the idea—and the ideals—of a reconstructed, antislavery constitution were lost to our national consciousness. If we value the idea—and the ideals—we must revive them. My project here is an aspect of my broader project. It is to recall, and perhaps to revive, an African American feminist coalition that was vibrant during the antislavery years. It was a coalition grounded in a common respect for human dignity and human rights. It consisted of antislavery activists working to draw out, and enact in their own lives, the principles that underlay their opposition to enslavement. I refer to these principles as antislavery principles, but the phrase should be understood to encompass opposition to subordination in many forms and on many grounds. Especially on grounds of race and gender.
Source Publication
Women and the United States Constitution: History, Interpretation, and Practice
Source Editors/Authors
Sybyl A. Schwarzenbach, Patricia Smith
Publication Date
2003
Recommended Citation
Davis, Peggy C., "Women, Bondage, and the Reconstructed Constitution" (2003). Faculty Chapters. 307.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/307
